OWA in a small environment

So I'm looking into Exchange 2003 deployment options for midsized customers.
Customers that currently have say 50 users but expect to grow over the next
year or two to maybe 200 users. Because of that and some other limitations
of SBS I have been looking at a regular deployment of Exchange 2003.

I've read a lot of the technet and KB stuff and I understand the
"recommended" way is to do a front end/back end server setup for OWA.
However, my smaller clients have only 2 servers... 1 for domain
infrastructure such as global catalog, dns, dhcp, etc. And another set
asside for Exchange.

In this setup can OWA be run on the single Exchange server and be accessed
from the internet? I assume it can as SBS allows for this, but the MS site
doesn't talk about it.

I guess the ultimate question is what is the absolute minimum in the way of
number of servers one can get away with when doing a Win 2003 standard
server deployment with Exchange 2003?

Thanks,
Dan
dan"AT"kissnetworks.net

Lanwench
Thu Sep 09 22:29:54 CDT 2004

Dan Canfield wrote:
> So I'm looking into Exchange 2003 deployment options for midsized
> customers. Customers that currently have say 50 users but expect to
> grow over the next year or two to maybe 200 users. Because of that
> and some other limitations of SBS I have been looking at a regular
> deployment of Exchange 2003.
>
> I've read a lot of the technet and KB stuff and I understand the
> "recommended" way is to do a front end/back end server setup for OWA.
> However, my smaller clients have only 2 servers... 1 for domain
> infrastructure such as global catalog, dns, dhcp, etc. And another
> set asside for Exchange.
>
> In this setup can OWA be run on the single Exchange server and be
> accessed from the internet? I assume it can as SBS allows for this,
> but the MS site doesn't talk about it.

Yes....it's installed by default. If you want to access it from the internet
just open up the requisite port in your router. I strongly suggest using SSL
and then port 443 for some degree of security/encryption.
>
> I guess the ultimate question is what is the absolute minimum in the
> way of number of servers one can get away with when doing a Win 2003
> standard server deployment with Exchange 2003?

Minimum? One server. Hard to have fewer than that!
>
> Thanks,
> Dan
> dan"AT"kissnetworks.net

Dan
Thu Sep 09 23:17:56 CDT 2004

> Yes....it's installed by default. If you want to access it from the
internet
> just open up the requisite port in your router. I strongly suggest using
SSL
> and then port 443 for some degree of security/encryption.

Ok, thanks for the info.

> > I guess the ultimate question is what is the absolute minimum in the
> > way of number of servers one can get away with when doing a Win 2003
> > standard server deployment with Exchange 2003?
>
> Minimum? One server. Hard to have fewer than that!

So you are 1 server lower than I was figuring. I was going to run one
server as the domain controler, dns, dhcp, etc and the run the exchange
server separate.

Thanks again.

Dan
dan"AT"kissnetworks.net

Lanwench
Fri Sep 10 07:58:46 CDT 2004

Dan Canfield wrote:
>> Yes....it's installed by default. If you want to access it from the
>> internet just open up the requisite port in your router. I strongly
>> suggest using SSL and then port 443 for some degree of
>> security/encryption.
>
> Ok, thanks for the info.
>
>>> I guess the ultimate question is what is the absolute minimum in the
>>> way of number of servers one can get away with when doing a Win 2003
>>> standard server deployment with Exchange 2003?
>>
>> Minimum? One server. Hard to have fewer than that!
>
> So you are 1 server lower than I was figuring. I was going to run one
> server as the domain controler, dns, dhcp, etc and the run the
> exchange server separate.

That is a very good plan and I recommend it - resource load for one thing,
and the fact that disaster recovery on an Exchange server that's also the
sole DC is a big pain in the _____.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> Dan
> dan"AT"kissnetworks.net